Such timepieces have been known for a long time, in particular within the domain of so-called complicated watches such as repeater watches or grand strike watches. For a good understanding of the state of the art within the domain of complicated watches, reference can be made to the work by Francois Lecoultre entitled “Les montres compliquées” (ISBN 2-88175-000-1), which includes in particular several chapters relating to watches fitted with a striking mechanism (pages 97 to 205), including one chapter dedicated to grand strike watches (182 to 205).
Grand strike watches generally comprise two gear trains, a motion work for driving the time display means such as hands, and a strike train for driving the striking mechanism, each train comprising its own barrel and barrel spring to provide the drive energy for driving the train.
In order to reduce the number of elements forming the timepiece and in order to save space, the use of a single barrel for both trains has been proposed. This is the case in CH Patent Nos. 50 729 and 23 477, which each disclose and show a timepiece wherein the motion work is driven by the toothed drum of the barrel and the strike train is driven by a toothed wheel coaxial to the barrel arbour and connected in rotation to the barrel arbour by a click cooperating via a ratchet secured to the barrel arbour.
These solutions are not completely satisfactory since they require an alteration to the barrel structure in order to make it able to withstand this dual use. In particular, an additional click and ratchet system has to be arranged on the top face of the barrel, whereas the winding ratchet has to be arranged on the opposite side, which has a negative effect on the axial space requirement of the barrel.